


full speed, swerve off track

by iihappydaysii



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), the nick jonas fandom is that a thing lmao
Genre: Coming Out, F/M, M/M, concern about coming out, mostly a conversation, nick had a crush on dan but dan is with phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 11:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17827421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iihappydaysii/pseuds/iihappydaysii
Summary: Nick Jonas tells his fiancé about the time he had a crush on YouTuber, Dan Howell.





	full speed, swerve off track

**Author's Note:**

> just a quick thing i wrote in like two hours idk mate

Nick’s sides ached from laughing at Priyanka’s story. She had a way with words, a way about her that just made everything brighter and funnier and more brilliant. He loved this, just sitting with her on a Sunday afternoon, on her couch in her apartment where nothing worked, not even the toaster or the doorbell.

“You have to tell me!” Priyanka gave Nick a playful shove. “I told you mine.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Who hasn’t had a crush on their teacher?” He was doing his best to make it out like he wasn’t impressed with his story because he wanted her to keep talking. If she kept talking, then he didn’t have to.

Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. “He had a mullet, Nick. It’s embarrassing.”

“And you did write him that poem…” Nick nodded, giving in. He’d always give in to her. He’d be giving into her since the day they met, and he’d be giving into her when he was old man.

“Shut up!” she pouted, then straightened back up. “Besides, it was a sonnet. And I got full marks in English for it.”

Of course she did.

Nick gave her a look. “Still…”

“Alright,cheeky. But I’m not letting you get out of this.” Priyanka turned towards him, leaning in. “Strangest crush you’ve ever had.”

He sighed and glanced down at his hands. He couldn’t look at her right now. He could pick a different crush. Make something up, but it wouldn’t be the truth. It wouldn’t be the thing he needed to tell her. That he’d needed to tell her for a while. “Pri…”

“Nick, what is it?” Her soft playfulness fell away and was replaced with a look of concern that only made Nick feel worse. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…” His throat was so tight, his mouth so dry. “I really don’t want you to think differently of me.”

What if she did? What if this made her think his love was less genuine? That she was his beard or something? People understood gay and straight, but for some reason, he’d learned they had trouble with everything that went on in the middle.

“We’re just joking around…” Priyanka was so gentle, so earnest as she laid one of her perfect hands on Nick’s knee. “You don’t have to tell me anything, but you can, you know? You _can_ tell me anything.”

He looked her in the eye, made himself even though it was hard. “I love you, Pri,” he said firmly. “With my whole fucking heart. I need you to know that.”

He really did. He needed her to know that truth, to hold it close and not let it go now matter what.

“Okay, weirdo,” Priyanka let out an awkward laugh. "I love you too.”

Nick breathed and steadied himself before he started into it. “So… uh, a few years ago I was presenting this award. Teen choice in the UK and there was this other presenter.” He rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck.

“Ooo… you hooked up with another presenter?” Priyanka raised her eyebrows. “Scandalous.”

“We didn’t hook up.” Nick averted his eyes again. He couldn’t help it. How do you tell your fiancé this? This thing that could change everything you loved so much and wanted to keep exactly the same.

She hesitated. “But you wanted to?”

Nick swallowed, trying to push down the panic. “I… uh, yeah, I did.”

“Oh my God, who was she? Someone I know?” It was clear Priyanka was searching for what Nick was so nervous about telling her… she had no fucking idea, but he really did have to tell her. He couldn’t marry her without telling her. And God, he wanted to marry her.

“No and…” _say it, Nick. You’re going to have to fucking say it._ “and it was a he.” Nick’s admission was met with a silence that he just thought might kill him. “Priyanka, look…” how the hell was he going to explain this? He’d never fully understood it himself. He wasn’t qualified to explain how he felt.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

Nick drew in a deep breath. “Dan… Dan Howell.” It felt strange to say the name again. He’d so rarely said it aloud, though there was a time when he’d roll it around in his mind over and over again.

“Is he an actor or…?”

“He’s a, uh, Youtuber.”

Priyanka snorted. “… oh, okay. Yikes.”

Nick almost laughed and that was a miracle right now. God, he loved her. She was the miracle. “That was what you react to? That he was a Youtuber? Not that he was a he?”

“Yeah, Nick,” she said seriously. “I have my priorities straight. But I’m definitely going to need more details.” Priyanka grabbed her phone off the side and table and started messing around with it.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked.

“Looking him up,” she said simply.

A bolt of inexplicable panic struck through Nick and he lunged forward to grab the phone from. “Don’t look him—”

She leaned back, pulling the phone out of reach and craned back her neck to see the screen. “Damn, Nick. He can get it.”

Nick gave up and settled back in his seat. “Priyanka, Oh my God.” But she wasn’t wrong. Dan Howell was gorgeous and he could fucking get it.

She sat back down beside him. He could see she was looking at his Instagram. “Should I follow him?”

“Don’t fucking follow him. _Jesus_.” Dan probably wouldn’t care or notice, but that would still embarrass the shit out of Nick.

Priyanka turned off her phone and set it aside. “So, I take it you struck out, then?”

How much was he going to tell her? Was he going to tell her how his stomach flipped over when Dan touched him? How he started to get hard when their bodies were pressed together… no, he definitely should keep that to himself.

“I didn’t try that night. Not really. Not as much as I wanted to. I got my courage up a bit later, but then, it wasn’t the right time, I guess.”

He’d spent all day working himself up to send that tweet. To maybe get to see Dan again.

She gave him a soft look. “Nick…”

“He was really cute…” Nick admitted, feeling his cheeks heat up. “And tall and smelled so good. I’d been thinking about this… my sexuality, I guess, for a while at that point. That I was attracted to men too.” He wanted to make sure she knew it was _too_ not only, _too. “_ Then, there he was. Gorgeous and funny and that accent.”

She gave him crooked smile. It was one of his favorite things she did. “So you’re into me for my accent then?”

“Among other things…” he said, matching her smile with one of his own before becoming serious again. "This really isn’t weirding you out?”

“No, Nick,” she said with an almost impossible kindness. “It’s not.”

Because of her, he felt safe to go on, “That night, I felt like he might have been flirting with me… I was definitely flirting with him. I wanted to, you know, just ask him to get a drink or something and then maybe… who knows. But I waited, tried to psych myself into it and he was gone before I got the chance.”

Nick spent a long time regretting that. A long time imagining what could have happened that night had he had the guts to ask Dan out the way he’d immediately wanted to.

“That sucks.”

Nick shrugged. “He probably would’ve turned me down anyway. I guess I saved myself a lot of embarrassment.”

“He’d have been an idiot to turn you down.”

“Or taken…” At the time, he hadn’t realized it, but yeah, Dan was definitely taken. It was more than noticeable when he watched back clips of the award show and saw the way Phil had reacted to Nick. There was the way he’d tried to break up his hug with Dan, for one. For a while, he’d almost hated him, wanted to take something from him, which was so incredibly unfair and stupid.

“The other guy in these photos.” Priyanka was always so observant. Saw the world in ways and colors he couldn’t even imagine.

“He was hosting that night too. I didn’t see it at the time, but looking back… and when I was in London, Dan was heading to Japan with that guy, Phil, I think. I just sort of took it as a sign to let it go, you know? I was scared anyway.”

Scared of what it would be like not to just be attracted to a man, but to act on that attraction. Scared of what it could mean for his life, his career, his future.

Priyanka reached over and slipped her hand into his. It made every tense thing inside him ease. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay. I pined something awful for him, though. It was pretty pathetic. I kept having these dreams about him. And just kept picturing things with him, me and him together you know? All I did was daydream for like months straight after we met and watch all his videos on a private browser.”

He’d walked around with his hollow ache in his chest, a six foot emptiness trapped inside all five foot six of him.

“That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Pri…”

“No, seriously. I want to meet this guy,” she said, picking up her phone again. “You said he was a Youtuber?”

“Yeah. Wait, don’t do that.” He didn’t know what she was going to do, but whatever it was he wanted her to stop.

She was intently focused on her screen as she said, “I need to hear the voice of the man that stole your heart.”

“You stole my heart,” he said easily because it was the truth. The capital T kind of truth. The inalienable kind.

Suddenly, Dan’s voice was coming from Priyanka’s phone “Hello, internet. I’m having one of those quarter lives crises again…” his voice went on and Pri looked from Dan on the screen of her phone, to Nick, to the phone and back to Nick again with that kind of dark look in her eye she’d get before things would heat up between them.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Nick’s voice cracked.

“I’m just imagining—”

He was quick enough this time to snatch the phone away from her. “You’re not allowed to imagine anything.”

There was a beat of silence as Nick held the phone in his hand. The video was paused but Dan’s admittedly still pretty face was looking up at him.

“Did you ever…?” Priyanka asked, quietly.

Nick shook his head. “I told you we didn’t.” He didn’t regret it now, not really. He liked the way his life had worked out, but he did wonder sometimes, what it would have been like—a world with him and dan, together, in it.

“Of course not with Dan. He’s definitely with that other guy. But I meant, have you ever… with another man?”

“No. I haven’t,” he admitted.

Another beat of silence and then, “Do you feel like that’s something you need… or want?”

He hated that she would think that. That wasn’t him. “No, Pri—”

“Because I’d understand—”

“No,” he said firmly, turning towards her. “That might be an issue for some people, but it’s just really not for me. It’s you, Pri. Only and always you.”

With that, she smiled, softly, this time and then leaned forward to kiss him. He loved that kiss. He felt a lifetime in that kiss.

She pulled back gently, then leaned her forehead against his. “Thank you for telling me, for trusting me with this.”

He shut his eyes. Nick wasn’t sure he’d ever been as thankful for Priyanka as he was now and that was saying something. She’d been the best thing that had ever happened to him. It was a cliche, he thought. But cliches became cliches because they were true. Still, he wanted to lighten the moment, bring them up out of this serious place he’d brought them too and back to normal, so Nick said this, with a smile.

“I mean… at least Dan doesn’t have a mullet, right?”

 


End file.
